The decision by longtime Meretz leader Zehava Gal-On to step aside for the upcoming primaries to make way for a younger leadership symbolizes more than just a generational shift. Knesset member Tamar Zandberg, likely to be crowned on March 22 as Gal-On’s successor in the left-wing party, is signaling a clear shift in political strategy, shelving the Gal-On style “purism” that has ruled out any type of partnership with right-wing parties.

Zandberg wants to “exert influence from within” and is therefore willing to join a government in which hawkish Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman is a member. In a Feb. 13 Haaretz article, Zandberg argued that one cannot change politics from the outside. She has not retracted her statement to the effect that she does not rule out joining a governing coalition that includes Liberman’s right-wing Yisrael Beitenu. When asked by Al-Monitor whether she supports a partnership with a party that advocates the expulsion of Israel’s Arab citizens and whose top leadership is suspected of corruption, she responded, “Meretz will not join any calls for a transfer [of Arabs], of course, nor will it lend a hand to corruption. I am striving for Meretz to be part of a left-wing government that makes peace and promotes social justice. Not part of any other government.”

Uri Zaki, Zandberg’s partner and head of the Meretz Governing Assembly, was less diplomatic about the stamp of approval she gave Yisrael Beitenu. “Liberman will not determine for us whether we join the government or stay out,” Zaki said.

Knesset member Ilan Gilon, who pulled out of the leadership race for health reasons and declared his support for Zandberg, also opposes the approach that precludes partnership with the right. Speaking with Al-Monitor, Gilon said that Meretz should join any government that adopts two of what he calls the party’s three-part “partition plan,” a reference to the 1947 UN decision on the creation of the State of Israel. He listed the three as a redivision of the country, redistribution of its wealth and reorientation of relations between matters of state and religion. Liberman favors the separation of religion and state as well as the redivision of Israel — as long as the latter includes the transfer of Israeli Arab towns and villages, along with their residents, to a future Palestinian state.